Critical Reflection #4:

In my last post, I attached a link to an article from the Waterloo Record. The article about how the Waterloo region already had, in a way, its own LRT system a century ago was mine boggling. I had no idea that Cambridge area had one, and then tons of questions came to mind such as where was it, how long was the track, why is it not in commission now?  The Records article explains that the train lost its fight with vehicles such as cars and trucks, but it seems like such as waste to me. If you think about what if, Waterloo Region could be so different than what it is today. Back in the day, the article states that there was about 35 000 people using the rail lines to get to work, and the new LRT is predicted to have about 27 000 riders the first day. What if, instead of discarding the rails in the 1950’s, the region decided to embrace it by adding different lines every decade or so. This would have meant that Waterloo Region could have had an incredibly mature transit system that was in commission for a century. Sadly this is not so, and this makes me personally, as an urban planning student very upset. The idea of what could have been haunts me.